De Niro, DiCaprio face off for role in Scorsese’s “The Audition”

MACAU – Hollywood heavyweights Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio have both starred in several Martin Scorsese films. Now the veteran director has pitted his two collaborators against each other in “The Audition”, with both vying for the same role.

The 15-minute film, a multimillion-dollar short movie promoting the opening of Melco Crown Entertainment’s new casino in Macau, sees Scorsese, De Niro and DiCaprio playing themselves, and even Brad Pitt makes an appearance.

Originally slated to screen at the Venice Film Festival in September, “The Audition” premiered on Tuesday as the Hollywood-themed Studio City resort opened its doors.

“The premise of this competition was very humorous for both of us because we’ve both done a lot of films with Mr Scorsese,” DiCaprio told a news conference. “So what would it be like if we both showed up at this casino; we’re competing for the same role but we didn’t know it yet.”

Scorsese, known for films such as “Goodfellas” and “Gangs of New York”, said he wrote the script with his “Wolf of Wall Street” collaborator Terence Winter.

“A short film is even tougher in a way because it has to be a film. It has to be not something that is a prologue to a bigger work, it has to be contained in of itself,” he said.

“We all pulled together and we came up with these ideas … and we shot five days straight. We also tried to make it a heightened …, not biographical but reality-based with humor about ourselves.”

Melco Crown’s $3.2 billion Studio City is its third casino in the southern Chinese territory of Macau. -Reuters